CCN II PILOT RESEARCH PROJECT PROJECT TITLE PAGE PROJECT TITLE: Understanding and Improving NCI Trial Enrollment among African Americans in North Carolina PROJECT LEADER: William Carpenter, PhD, MHA PROJECT SUMMARY: The goals of the proposed Pilot study are to systematically analyze and understand enrollment patterns in NCI clinical trials in North Carolina, and assess strengths and weaknesses of specific interventions to increase minority enrollment in collaborafion with community partners. The Pilot seeks to Inform efforts to increase knowledge, access, and use of beneficial biomedical and behavioral procedures in cancer disparifies. It serves primarily as a research educafion experience for the Pilot Project Director (William Carpenter, PhD), an eariy-stage invesfigator with a career focus in racial disparifies in cancer care and outcomes. The Pilot will apply his experience in quantitative analysis to a cancer-focused problem in racial disparities, and provides a mentored training experience to build skills in CBPR, qualitative research methods, and intervention development The Pilot addresses the CNP goals of using CBPR to assess knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of racial/ethnic minorifies and underserved populafions regarding participation in NCI sponsored clinical trials. It does so by refining and applying a novel population-based method of systematically measuring county-level overall and minority clinical trial enrollment rates in North Carolina since 1995. It will use participatory methods with our CCN Community Outreach Program (COP) partners in the Greensboro Area Health Educafion Center (GAHEC) and Area-L AHEC regions (ALAHEC) to collaboratively interpret the observed enrollment patterns, and will convene focus groups with minority cancer survivors to assess specific educafional interventions being developed in the Cancer Clinical Trials learning cluster. The focus groups findings will inform refinement of the interventions, contribufing to their improved effectiveness in educating the community and enrolling minorities in clinical trials. The pilot will contribute to the CCN-ll program's community infrastructure and sustainability, and provide data for a future ROI applicafion. The Director of the NCI Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) and Minority-based CCOP (MBCCOP) has indicated a strong interest in disseminating these interventions through the CCOP network, and supporting the R01-funded examination of their effectiveness.